Share this story

Nokia gave a clinic yesterday in the art of screwing up a product launch. The company introduced two sleek new smartphones running Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 operating system, the Lumia 820 and Lumia 920. The 920 features a camera designed to match the capabilities of a real SLR camera. The device's imaging capabilities were touted as "a core area for differentiation" for what is intended to be the "flagship Windows Phone 8 smartphone."

But Nokia, with partner Microsoft at its side, mangled the launch in two key areas. The first problem was obvious, and immediately noted by those watching the event: no details about the price, release date, geographic availability, or carriers that will sell the phones were released. There is even confusion over whether 4G LTE will be supported.

Launching products without these details is sadly common in the consumer electronics industry (take, for example, Microsoft’s Surface tablet launch). It's especially unfortunate for Nokia and Microsoft, which are trying to build up the tiny Windows Phone market share against the iPhone and Android. But more embarrassingly, it turned out that a 90-second promotional video Nokia used to demonstrate the phone's imaging capabilities included several faked shots. Nokia wasn't confident enough in the phone camera's abilities to show off real-world results at its big launch.

The Verge caught Nokia in one fakery, a portion of the video in which a model is riding on a bicycle while being filmed—viewers are led to believe—by the Lumia 920's PureView camera. The phone camera can “record 1080p video, and both the lens and assembly are mounted on tiny springs to help keep it stable even if a jittery person is holding it," we noted yesterday in our coverage. The technology is called "optical image stabilization."

But the Lumia camera wasn't used at all in the video. In a reflection of a trailer window in the background, The Verge noticed a “big white van with a lighting rig and a cameraman standing in the doorway—with what appears to be a large camera rig."

"In an effort to demonstrate the benefits of optical image stabilization (which eliminates blurry images and improves pictures shot in low light conditions), we produced a video that simulates what we will be able to deliver with OIS," Nokia said. "Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but we should have posted a disclaimer stating this was a representation of OIS only. This was not shot with a Lumia 920. At least, not yet. We apologize for the confusion we created. We are looking forward to bringing the Lumia 920, with PureView optical image stabilization to select markets later this year."

Nokia could argue that the video doesn't say the shots were taken with the Lumia. Although it's clearly and explicitly an ad for the Lumia, the shots compare footage with OIS "on" or "off." Technically, it's possible OIS technology was used, but without a Lumia phone.

Still, Nokia had to apologize, and that's never a good sign after your biggest product launch in months, if not your biggest one of the whole year. The trickery involving the model on the bike was designed to show off the phone's video-taking capabilities. After Nokia's confession, other people started looking at still images shown in the video, concluding that they were faked as well.

A designer named Youssef Sarhan did an analysis of the photos shot in Helsinki, including this one, a still from the faked video:

The technical analysis itself wasn’t conclusive, but it prompted a reader on Hacker News to share a photo of the photo shoot. The photo shows some lighting equipment and, just barely visible on the left edge, the legs of a tripod and a camera lens that is most definitely not from a smartphone:

We asked Nokia about this seeming proof that the still images weren’t shot with a Lumia. The company told us, “Contrary to information posted on some blogger and technology websites, all still images found on the PureView page on Nokia.com were taken using a Nokia Lumia 920 prototype phone.” This statement ignores the fact that the analysis was of the still images in the promotional video, and not the images on Nokia's website. Nokia did not deny that the above still—which is not on Nokia.com but rather in the video uploaded to YouTube by Nokia—was faked.

In its apology for the trickery it did admit to, Nokia provides what it said is an authentic (if less stunning) video demonstrating the 920’s OIS capabilities:

The technology will probably turn out to be a worthy addition to the smartphone market, even if the way it was revealed was embarrassing. With Microsoft counting on Nokia to build the premier handsets for Windows Phone software, we’d expect Microsoft to lean heavily on Nokia to make sure this kind of trickery doesn’t happen again.

The question is whether a reasonable person would believe it is real. I think a reasonable person would conclude that, no matter how good the 3D is, actual fish will not swim out of your TV. Just like a reasonable person would conclude that eating a peppermint patty will not take you to a snowy mountain top, and drinking Corona will not transport you to a tropical island.

A reasonable person might, however, conclude that demonstration video shown in an advertisement for a device that records video, was recorded with that device.

If a reasonable person is deceived, it's false advertising. (PS: a reasonable person would not conclude that this constitutes legal advice.)

I know I'm not adding much here, but your response made me laugh out loud in a crowded room.

Unfortunately the images are still provided by Nokia. And again this looks like they are playing misleading games.

OIS is nothing new in the camera world, were Canon is probably a champ in this area. I have a Canon compact with OIS, where you are lucky to get 3 stops of additional hand hold ability. Nokia seems to be showing 5 or 6 stops improvement.

So what is likely is they took dozens of shots and grabbed a couple of extra stable fluke shots. You can do the same thing on a camera without OIS and you will get occasional fluke shots that give much better than typical stability.

We won't know the truth until some competent third party actually tests it.

OIS is definitely a bonus, but as before, it looks like they are still exaggerating that benefit. I have Canon Camera with OIS and it really isn't that big of a deal.

Honestly the only people who will care one bit are the ones SEXTING or taking "Look how drunk we are" facebook pics when it comes to camera phones. Face it. Any person concerned about quality photos would carry a DSLR.

Nokia is the modern day Bigfoot Hunter when it comes to "photography" it seems.

Unfortunately the images are still provided by Nokia. And again this looks like they are playing misleading games.

OIS is nothing new in the camera world, were Canon is probably a champ in this area. I have a Canon compact with OIS, where you are lucky to get 3 stops of additional hand hold ability. Nokia seems to be showing 5 or 6 stops improvement.

So what is likely is they took dozens of shots and grabbed a couple of extra stable fluke shots. You can do the same thing on a camera without OIS and you will get occasional fluke shots that give much better than typical stability.

We won't know the truth until some competent third party actually tests it.

OIS is definitely a bonus, but as before, it looks like they are still exaggerating that benefit. I have Canon Camera with OIS and it really isn't that big of a deal.

The images are provided by the Verge, who were allowed to personally test the phone by Nokia. They haven't been too kind to Nokia lately, so I doubt they'd deliberately skew the truth on Nokia's behalf.

The images are provided by the Verge, who were allowed to personally test the phone by Nokia. They haven't been too kind to Nokia lately, so I doubt they'd deliberately skew the truth on Nokia's behalf.

My mistake I only read the first few sentences that said they had full shots on the Nokia blog, and thought that is what these were. I didn't read further to find about the retest with Verge people.

OIS is nothing new in the camera world, were Canon is probably a champ in this area. I have a Canon compact with OIS, where you are lucky to get 3 stops of additional hand hold ability. Nokia seems to be showing 5 or 6 stops improvement.

OIS is nothing new in the camera world but it's very new in the smartphone world. Nobody else has it. That's significant.

Honestly the only people who will care one bit are the ones SEXTING or taking "Look how drunk we are" facebook pics when it comes to camera phones. Face it. Any person concerned about quality photos would carry a DSLR.

I have young children. You never know when THE PERFECT PICTURE happens. I carry my cell phone everywhere. Do you walk around your house and go to the grocery store carrying a DSLR? I don't.

Dos it bug me that Nokia outright lied to me?Yeah, a bit but what really bugs me is that they were so inept as to make it completely obvious.

They know every bit of marketing media content they put out is going to be poured over by every tech blog on the net.You think they`d have someone actually "watch" the damn video looking for just such stupidity before it became public.

The fact that they stage this huge announcement with no mention of a release date and carrier info is idiotic as well.

This is so reminiscent of the Surface announcement Microsoft did in it`s ineptitude.

Amazon had pre-orders ready to go immediately post announcement.I bet they sold a ton of Kindles yesterday and are still doing so right now.Google had Nexus 7 pre-orders ready to go immediately post announcement and sold millions before the release date.

Does anyone at MS or Nokia pay attention to what's going on in their own industry?

They have what looks like killer tech but they seem so clueless as to how to market it.

Maybe it's because I'm used to the auto industry and the computer industry, but I'm totally used to the idea that when you unveil a product, it's not ready to be pre-ordered that day and pricing may not have been set. You may not even have a a concrete release date but only a month or quarter. That's what happens when a new BMW 3-Series is released or a new HP Envy is released. I'm really excited to buy an HP Envy X2 even though release date and pricing were not announced when it was unveiled (I'm betting late October and $750, but we'll see).

In my mind, the iPhone/Kindle/etc method is great when it works out, but far from mandatory. In fact, it really doesn't work at all when part of the equation is getting carriers excited to carry your product. Everyone already knows the iPhone will be a success, so you don't need to unveil it to get consumers and carriers excited enough to make it appear on X carrier. You do with other smartphones, from Motorola (who had an event the same day with no more details than Nokia had) to Samsung (same deal with their Ativ S release last week).

And the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire are sold directly by Google/Amazon, without third-party carriers in the picture, so it's easy for them to go on sale the same day they're unveiled.

And the Lumia 920's camera appears to be good in many respects, not JUST OIS. Remember I was responding to someone asking why you needed a good camera on your phone when you can just own a DSLR. That post you quoted was not specifically addressing OIS, but smartphone camera quality in general.

The purpose of the ads is the CONCEPT. It's like no one here understands marketing. It's also worth noting that Apple does not receive this same level of witch-hunting over their Siri ads, which show Siri working instantaneously every single time. Probably because it's not a big deal, they're simply showing you the concept of Siri. The commercials (and the Nokia video / stills) are not a fact sheet.

The Siri commercials are sped up for time, true, but they are still using the actual Siri!

The Nokia commercials are not using the actual product even though they are meant to convey the phone is taking that video.

There is a HUGE DIFFERENCE between those two things.

The Siri commercials have a disclaimer saying "Some sequences shortened."

As much as I hate to see marketing departments do these things (and I absolutely think it should be illegal) I'm still not too fond of punishing the company as a whole. It's easy to say that marketing/advertisers/companies are evil but it's the environment they're working in that is the problem. Since someone mentioned it, I believe France has outlawed photoshopped images of models without a disclaimer.

Personally, I was sorely disappointed by the camera in my iPhone 4; it's certainly decent enough but Apple is just as guilty of this as Nokia in my mind as I expected far better images from the marketing material. And I do notice a difference in leeway that some get over others.

Honestly the only people who will care one bit are the ones SEXTING or taking "Look how drunk we are" facebook pics when it comes to camera phones. Face it. Any person concerned about quality photos would carry a DSLR.

I have young children. You never know when THE PERFECT PICTURE happens. I carry my cell phone everywhere. Do you walk around your house and go to the grocery store carrying a DSLR? I don't.

Seconded. My next phone purchase will be very strongly influenced by the quality of the camera for just this reason. It's probably now the main spec I'll be looking for, second only to network speed/coverage. Considering I basically just use Maps, Pulse, and a couple other apps that are available on every platform, this is now top differentiator.

I'm beginning to think this controversy was deliberately created as a clever marketing ploy. Sometimes all publicity is good publicity. Imagine, someone decides to check the camera and image stabilisation in the Lumia, realises it is not as good as that in a pro camera, but better than of any other camera phone out there. I would buy it. Afterall, phones compete with phones, not standalone cameras.

Oh, and I love the "Everyone else is dishonest, so Nokia should be allowed to be dishonest too!" bit.

The difference there really is that the press and blogs/journalists didn't go on a witch hunt. In Apple's case, it is quite blatantly selling a product with those misleading images/ads. Serious enough that they are getting sued. I would like to see people sue Nokia for that commercial. It won't happen and as far as IANAL, I can tell noone would win. At the most, Nokia would get fined by the proper authorities for not putting in a disclaimer.. and even then I would say, it won't happen. It's an unreleased product and noone has bought it nor is it available.

I'm a little dissappointed in Ars really. You guys are usually a little more thought critical in writing your posts/articles. Aping The Verge is probably not the best way of it. Their "investigation" is little more than click and flame baiting with the inflammatory language used.

Even when offered to test the devices themselves, they do so while still throwing around (gist)"they lied", "even though their device works as advertised, we can't believe it works because they lied"

and "because they lied, we won't believe OIS works, because they lied".

It's a pointless witch hunt for an unreleased product on a teaser promotion video about the benefits of a specific technology.It's not even selling the product. It's a minor snafu at its worst and wholly undeserving of the attention it is getting. There are worse cases of these types of things happening for real products and services and it's quite blatant - these don't get anywhere near the scrutiny; if any at all.

Manufactured outrage and manufactured problem over what is a common industry practice. Where are the news and expose on other companies and products? My point is, for it to be anything other than a witch hunt to beat down a company certain individuals have biases against, it needs to be a lot more serious and expanded than just a single target over what is effectively a minor issue over an unreleased product.

Oh, and I love the "Everyone else is dishonest, so Nokia should be allowed to be dishonest too!" bit.

The difference there really is that the press and blogs/journalists didn't go on a witch hunt. In Apple's case, it is quite blatantly selling a product with those misleading images/ads. Serious enough that they are getting sued. I would like to see people sue Nokia for that commercial. It won't happen and as far as IANAL, I can tell noone would win. At the most, Nokia would get fined by the proper authorities for not putting in a disclaimer.. and even then I would say, it won't happen. It's an unreleased product and noone has bought it nor is it available.

I'm a little dissappointed in Ars really. You guys are usually a little more thought critical in writing your posts/articles. Aping The Verge is probably not the best way of it. Their "investigation" is little more than click and flame baiting with the inflammatory language used.

Even when offered to test the devices themselves, they do so while still throwing around (gist)"they lied", "even though their device works as advertised, we can't believe it works because they lied"

and "because they lied, we won't believe OIS works, because they lied".

It's a pointless witch hunt for an unreleased product on a teaser promotion video about the benefits of a specific technology.It's not even selling the product. It's a minor snafu at its worst and wholly undeserving of the attention it is getting. There are worse cases of these types of things happening for real products and services and it's quite blatant - these don't get anywhere near the scrutiny; if any at all.

Manufactured outrage and manufactured problem over what is a common industry practice. Where are the news and expose on other companies and products? My point is, for it to be anything other than a witch hunt to beat down a company certain individuals have biases against, it needs to be a lot more serious and expanded than just a single target over what is effectively a minor issue over an unreleased product.

I completely agree. The idea that the launch was "mangled" is ridiculous for a number of reasons, mainly because it wasn't a product launch but a product announcement. Intrigue is created by advertising and product announcements, when the phones are actually launching we'll have ads that are more specific in their claims or have disclaimers. We'll also have many hands on reviews to go off of.

Imagine a salesman coming to your door and demonstrating a new cleaning product and boy does that product work wonders! You agree after the demonstration that you will buy some. The guy goes out to his car and comes back with a $99.00 bottle of water. You of course say that this was not the chemical that was demonstrated and he comes back with a simple, "That demo was actually just a simulation of the awesome cleaning properties of water."

Now a consumer might ask themselves this. If the product wasn't good enough to make ANY of the marketing material at all, (Video shot professionally, stills shot on DSLR on tripod) then one might ask is it good enough for them.

Those that argue that Nokia is alright in misleading people then line up because I have some water you will of course buy because that is acceptable methods of business now I guess.

And to the comment about having children and taking the PERFECT SHOT. If the quality was that good wouldn't all professional photographers just use their phones? Even the Nokia people used a DSLR on a tripod for the PERFECT SHOTS. Phone cameras are good for candid shots, but anyone serious about the quality of their photograph is going to use something more professional. That is the reality of it.